Elections

With less than three weeks left before the deadline to file to run in the 2014 Primary Election, it is beginning to look as if the top people in city and county government may return to office without opposition.

Kentucky’s 2014 senatorial race, one of the hottest in the country, so far has not drawn significant interest – in the form of contributions – from Shelby County.

Elections largely are about fundraising and strategic spending, and in that race for U.S. Senator – a key national election that recent polls show a virtual tie – incumbent Republican Mitch McConnell is dominating fundraising in the state against Republican challenger Matt Bevin and Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes.

Longtime Shelby County Magistrate Mike Whitehouse formally announced what had been expected: He won’t seek a seventh term.

Whitehouse, a Democrat who has served for 27 years as magistrate in District 7, which is in the Finchville area, said his decision was prompted by increased obligations to his local UAW union at Martinrea Heavy Stamping, of which he was recently named president.

Thomas Massie, a Tea Party-backed Republican who was active along and against party lines during his first term in Congress, wants to return for a second term as U.S. representative in Kentucky’s 4th District, which includes Shelby County.

Massie, who took over the district in 2012 when Republican Geoff Davis abruptly resigned, filed Friday to run for re-election. In 2012, he defeated six Republicans in the primary and routed Democrat Bill Adkins by 27 points in the General Election.

In her first Shelbyville stop as a candidate for U.S. Senate, Alison Lundergan Grimes told a small crowd of Democrats that she hoped to help Shelby County make history again.

“Shelby County has made history before, right here in Bagdad [in reference to Martha Layne Collins’ being the state’s first woman governor], and with their help, we’re poised and ready to do it again,” she said in a brief question-and-answer session Tuesday after the private fundraiser at Talon Winery.

Circuit Judge John David Myles filed papers Wednesday with the Kentucky Secretary of State’s Office to seek a second term in the Family Court Division in the 53rd Judicial Circuit representing Anderson, Shelby and Spencer counties.

Myles was elected in November 2008 as the circuit’s first family court judge.